Near Light
by SolarRose29
Summary: After receiving a warning in a dream, Sam tries to save Dean from himself. (mild spoilers for 13x23 and 14x12)


Mild spoilers for Season 14, particularly as inspired by 14x12  
Title comes from the Olafur Arnalds song of the same name.

* * *

There are stained glass saints praying in the window. Robes in blue and red, halos like dawning stars around their heads. The white altar cloth has no wrinkles. On top of it, the silver cup that gleams like an all knowing eye. Candelabras, lit with flickering flame, stand guard on either side of the ancient text. Leatherbound, faded, but reverenced scripture. Tiny fires caught in jars, congregation of whispered pleas. The organ stands tall in the corner, long forgotten songs gathered low in its golden pipes. Wooden benches, divided by a worn red carpet. On either side, seven. A holy number.

Sam knows this place. The arched ceiling and the crucifix. The white walls and the vestibule. Hushed and sacred. Scented with prayer books and the faint aroma of untainted smoke. Innocence and religion, belief and hope. This is the church where he learned about God. Where he learned of angels that sang carols to shepherds, and that forgiveness was as simple as asking for it. This is the sanctuary where he found the faith he's long since abandoned.

In Blue Earth, Minnesota there stands an old church Sam hasn't been in for decades. Yet the apostles in the glass gaze back at him with sorrow in their eyes. It's only now that he's older that he recognizes the expression. He's seen it enough in the mirror. This is Pastor Jim's church. He steps closer to the altar, understanding better the concept of transgressions and redemption.

It's not so much a flicker of movement or the shudder of the candle flames but more of a vague impression that he isn't alone. He turns his head and gets a glimpse of a weathered jacket and a hard set of shoulders. The image stutters, skips like an antique film reel. Or a spirit trapped between worlds. There, a hand. And again, the wide expanse of torso and legs. A familiar face that halts the progression of oxygen in Sam's throat.

Dean's gone before he's ever really there. Now, dark skin. Now, a long coat. Now, a face that makes Sam's stomach lurch. Instinct has him reaching for a weapon. There is no gun in the waistband of his jeans. No duffle bag at his feet. Nothing but a crucifix, which is no weapon against an archangel.

"Michael." The name is ocean water on his tongue, a parody of comfort and punishingly bitter.

His feet move him forward, fist already raised. Michael lifts a hand, not of power but of supplication.

"Sam, wait."

The inevitable futility of the action stops Sam as much as the uncharacteristic submissive posture of the cosmic being in front of him.

"Where are we? What are you doing here? What the hell do you want?"

Michael shifts, Dean's features superimposed over his own, the afterimage of lightning on the back of an eyelid. Sam startles, rears back at the sight. The image settles, and the world rights itself.

"I thought you would be more comfortable if I appeared as you first saw me," Michael explains.

Sam frowns. "Then why-"

"Because I am no longer in this vessel, it is difficult to present myself as such."

It feels like a handful of marbles rattling down a track when Sam swallows, each one knocking along his ribs as it goes.

"How can you be here?" Sam asks. "The bunker is highly warded." He brings a hand to rub at his chest. "Not to mention the Enochian Cas-"

"This is a dream, Sam." Michael's tone borders on condescension. "Dreams are a preferred method of angel to human communication." His eyes stray toward the altar. "Didn't you ever read your Bible?"

"What do you want?" Sam asks again, temper like a rising pressure gauge in his head.

Michael pins him with the intensity of his gaze when he returns it. "I came to ask for your help, Sam Winchester."

His immediate reaction is to bulk. "You? An archangel?" he scoffs. "You need my help?"

Michael's face holds no more humor than a granite tombstone. That flips the switch in Sam's mind and his anger spews out like newborn lava. "You think I'm going to help you after what you did to Dean?"

"I haven't done anything," Michael begins.

"Bullshit," snaps Sam. "I was there when Dean killed Lucifer. One moment, he was standing next to me, and the next, he was gone. And that was weeks ago."

Michael twitches, cocking his head and rolling his shoulders in mannerisms so like Dean's, Sam has to look away. "If I was the one calling the shots, don't you think you would have heard about it by now?"

There's no counter argument Sam can make. The evening news has been surprisingly mundane of late and even the hunting world is nothing but good reports, victories and progress. So he stays quiet.

"I hate your world. I hate all of my father's worlds." Gnash of teeth, stark white in the grinding jaws. "If I could, I would burn this Earth. Burn all of it."

"You're not making your case sound any more appealing," Sam interrupts. "Basically, what you're asking me to do is help you destroy the world?" He snorts, an ugly cynical sound formed of regret and old wounds. "Been there, done that. Same song, different angel."

The allusion to Lucifer sends a visible ripple through Michael, an earthquake of self-righteousness and loathing contorting his human appearance until streaks of brilliant white-blue come out of the cracks. Supernova and otherworldly. Sam shields his eyes against the risk of being blinded.

When he regains control, Michael takes a seat in the nearest pew. Leans forward and takes the prayer book from the shelf. Leafs through it as he says, "I'm asking you to save your brother."

Spark to gasoline and Sam launches forward accordingly. His arm against Michael's chest, throwing him against the wooden seatback. "Are you threatening him?"

"The only one doing harm to your brother is himself," Michael assures him without a trace of deceit.

"What are you talking about?" Sam doesn't release his grip.

"When Dean said yes, he made...certain stipulations." Michael closes the book.

Sam waits, allowing the angel to tell his story. There's a grin, jarring in its beauty and discomforting in its timing.

"Your brother's taken on more than he can handle."

"Enough with the riddles. Enough with the games," Sam punctuates each demand by slamming Michael into the bench, "Tell me what's wrong with Dean!"

"Dean's always so impulsive. Isn't he, Sam? Always talking before he thinks. Leaping before he looks." The way Michael's voice lifts and falls, like he wants Sam to agree with him. Like he knows he already does. "He's not like you, Sam. He can't see the big picture, never plans ahead."

Demons lie. Angels don't. Both of them screw with Sam's head.

"When Dean let me in, he took me prisoner." There's a pause, a beat between the cocking of a gun and the pulling of the trigger. Anger locks Michael's muscles, setting them to a low vibration.

Sam watches warily, seeing the way he trembles with it.

"He is my sword. I was to wield him, not be impaled upon him," Michael seethes.

A flare of pride ignites in Sam's spine, licking up his vertebrae and warming the shoulder blades he pulls back straight and firm. "He's got you by the short and curlies."

Michael's lips peel away from his gums, a fierce snarl. "What he has is power he was never meant to possess."

"Aw, what's the matter, Mike? Is getting beaten by a human bringing you down?" The taunt feels good coming out of Sam's mouth, like sharpened steel and being the last one standing.

"Tell me something, Sam." There's a shift in his demeanor now, the mirror smooth surface of a poisoned lake. "When you carried the devil inside of yourself, how was your body not consumed?"

"How do you know about that?" Sam asks, blood draining from his face.

A finger taps slowly at Michael's temple. "I have access to all of your brother's memories. His thoughts. His...emotions. Your union with Lucifer? He agonizes over it even to this day."

It's a testament to how screwed up their lives are that hearing that is comforting, in a way.

"Again, Sam. How did you survive Lucifer?"

His brows draw together as Sam answers, "Because I was his true vessel."

Michael inclines his head. "And you allowed him in, free of constraint?"

Sam shrugs one shoulder. "Yeah, I guess. The plan was always to throw him back into the pit though. Which I did."

Michael hums dismissively. "His grace entwined with your soul?"

"Entwined...?" Sam echoes incredulously. "What the hell does that even mean?"

Michael's got a smug smile hovering just in the shadowed corners of his mouth. "Here's the thing, Sam. In my world, you and Dean were never born. So. No true vessels."

"But you just said-" Sam interrupts.

"There are still advantages," Michael concedes. "Dean is still the Michael Sword, designed to contain me. Just not," he sweeps a hand in a vague gesture down his torso, "this version of me. Although, if the circumstances were changed, that wouldn't matter."

"Just get to the point," Sam says.

Michael rises off the bench suddenly. "Your brother is not fusing with my grace, he is drawing from it. Using it for his own purposes."

"That's a bad thing?"

For a moment, Sam thinks the angel is going to strike him. When he doesn't, Sam wonders if it's because this is a dream or because Michael thinks it's beneath him. Whatever the reason, Michael regains his composure and says, "I have no control over my own grace, which means that I can not heal your brother."

Worry springs to the front of Sam's mind. "Why does he need to be healed? What's wrong with him?"

"Do you recall that unfortunate man Lucifer inhabited before you said yes?"

"Who? Nick?"

Michael dips his head in the affirmative. "Do you remember how quickly his mortal body deteriorated?"

Sam frowns. "He seemed just fine in recent years."

The sigh Michael gives is impatient. "After he had been in his true vessel. You were changed by his possession of you, yes?" At Sam's reluctant nod, Michael continues. "He was changed as well. Once he had received a taste of your soul, it was enough to sustain him, even in a different vessel."

"What does all of this have to do with Dean?" Talking about Satan and the brief period where he possessed Sam sends spiders scurrying over his brain. It's like cockroaches laying eggs on his tongue and a needle sliding into the snow white meat of his eyeball. He's only too eager to change the subject.

"Dean is dying."

Sam would have preferred the punch. It would hurt less.

"I can't save him." Michael's tone is bitter, sullen at the loss of his prize.

There's a question Sam needs to ask. Information to be gathered. But his chest is seizing and the line between his mind and his mouth has been severed. He really shouldn't react this way. One or the other of them is always dying. But he can't help the way the world grinds to a halt every single time.

"He doesn't have long now." Michael takes no pity on Sam's distress.

"How..." It's a minor battle to force that single word out past the barbed wire in his throat. He tries again. "Why?"

Michael tilts his head. "As Scripture says, 'Can a man embrace fire and his clothes not be burned? Can he walk on burning coals without scorching his feet?'" White-blue shines out of his eyes. "There's a reason God didn't create man with the power of the angels. Your mortal bodies are too weak to contain it."

"What do I need to do?" Sam asks, voice odd even to his own ears.

The celestial light fades, leaving brown irises. "You must find Dean and force him to cast me out."

"Yeah, find Dean. Right." Sam nods, purses his lips. Leans forward and barks, "What do you think I've spent the past two weeks trying to do, huh?"

"It would help if you looked in the right place, wouldn't it?" Michael smiles, arrogance in the arch of his brows, superiority in the lift of his shoulder.

His life has given him nothing if not a healthy appreciation for cynicism so Sam crosses his arms. "You're not telling me this out of the goodness of your heart."

Hands clasped behind his back, Michael starts a slow circle around Sam. "No."

"What do you want?" Sam growls.

Michael comes to a stop in front of him. "My freedom."

"No."

"Listen to me, Sam. This is the only way you can save your brother."

Reluctantly, Sam holds his tongue.

"If I give you Dean's location, you come and convince him to expel me. Once I'm out, I will return to my own world," Michael says.

Unable to stop himself, Sam chuckles, low and skeptical. "You've already admitted that you want to burn this world. All worlds. And I'm supposed to believe that you're going to go back to the one you already ruined?"

"I give you my word."

"I don't give a rat's ass about your word," Sam snaps.

Michael's eyes harden.

"And even if I did believe you, which I don't, how are we supposed to get you back there? The portal closed," Sam says.

"You opened a portal once. You can do it again," Michael dismisses.

"Right. Because it's so easy to do." Sam shakes his head. "Do you know how hard some of those ingredients were to find?"

"With my power, you won't need all of those," Michael says.

Sam frowns. "Why are you so eager to get back there?"

"Anywhere is better than here," Michael answers, a little too casually for Sam's taste.

He takes a moment, thinks through the problem, untangles the mess of omitted intentions and opaque clues. "Dean's not the only one who's dying." His head jolts up with the realization.

Michael's silence is confirmation enough. "He's drawing from your grace and without control of the host body, you have no way to keep yourself together. You're being ripped apart."

Shadows lick at Michael's face when the archangel's anger causes the candles to sputter in their holdings.

"That's why you're so desperate for my help," Sam concludes. "Maybe I should just let you die. It would solve a whole lot of problems."

"If I die, Dean dies with me." The reminder comes out from clenched teeth.

The Winchester Achilles' heel. Sam really doesn't have a choice. His expression sobers and he can't shake the feeling that he's about to make a devil's deal.

When he wakes, the scent of incense in his nostrils, he packs a bag. Loads the car and leaves without saying goodbye. Currently, the bunker is full of people. Good people. People who could help. People who would love to help. But this is something he has to do. Alone. The way it's always been for him and Dean. When it comes to each other, there are no outsiders.

He heads east and then north. Travels the long black ribbon of asphalt that lays across America. The city name circles in his head, urges him to drive on nothing more than gas station coffee and determination. Because he's Sam and because he's never learned how to turn off his brain, scenarios play out in his mind's eye, hours long to keep him company with all the ways this can go wrong.

Sometimes, he's too late and Dean's moved on. Disappeared without a trace. Sometimes, he's too late and Dean's already dead. Nothing more than a burned out husk. Sometimes, he finds out Michael was lying. And he smiles out of Dean's face when he rips Sam apart.

The day is just transitioning to dusk, the sky turning over and revealing a colorful underbelly as it surrenders, when he parks the car and starts showing Dean's picture around. Nobody's seen Dean. Those terrible scenes come back in a rush and Sam's energy flags and he wants nothing more than to get back in his car and return to the bunker. To research. To get backup. To even sleep because, as it turns out, being visited by an archangel in a dream is not as restful as one might think. He's ready to call it quits. But there's one place he hasn't checked yet. As distasteful as the idea is, not to mention how unreliable the source may be, Sam could never live with himself if he didn't exhaust every possibility.

He catches up to her three blocks from the hall where she holds her healing services. She's got her head down, counting a thick stack of money. Before he says a word, she turns around. Her expression is only mildly surprised. "Sam."

"Jo." He lifts empty hands, but he's not unarmed. There's an angel blade hidden under his jacket. He hopes he won't have to use it.

"I assume you're here for Michael," she hums.

No beating around the bush. Sam jerks, spine straightening. "You've seen him?"

She flicks a length of hair over her shoulder. "No. But I can sense him. An archangel, especially one from another world...well. That's a little hard to miss."

"Where is he?" Sam doesn't realize his feet have carried him so close to her.

Two steps take her away from his looming bulk. "I don't know for sure. He is in Duluth though."

"Can't you be a little more precise?" Sam demands.

"I could." She wiggles her pile of bills meaningfully.

With gritted teeth, Sam pulls out his wallet. She eagerly takes the money from him.

"He's nearby."

It's not just the fatigue and hunger that are making Sam irritable right now. "That's all you've got for me?"

"Hey, if he ever finds out I was the one who told you, he'll kill me."

Before Sam can let her know that Michael isn't the one pulling the strings, she vanishes from sight, nothing but the sound of rustling feathers in her wake.

"Great." Sam throws his hands up. "What am I supposed to do? Wander around here, hoping I bump into him?"

He starts walking anyway and has just passed the mouth of an alley when he hears the flutter of wings again. Surprised at Jo's reappearance, he turns around with a question on the tip of his tongue. A question he never asks. The street behind him is empty. In the alley however, two shapes collide in a blur of claws and denim.

"Dean!" Sam sprints, leaps, reaches out and closes his fingers around a thin arm.

Then the ground lurches, his body tugged away and up and then he's losing his balance when sand shifts beneath his boots. He rolls as he falls, the way he was taught. When he comes back up, it's just in time to watch Dean press a hand to the werewolf's forehead. The creature's jaw drops open, jagged teeth exposed as she howls a death note. Holy fire burns her up from the inside. Her body drops, hollow pits of her eyes still smoking, to land on top of a vampire's equally dead body. And now that Sam's standing, he can see what has to be hundreds of bodies laid out on the sand. Here the exposed spike of a wraith, there the misshapen wendigo skull. Bile sloshes against the walls of his stomach, itching to ride up his throat.

With the brilliance of the midday sun behind him, Dean has a halo. It wreaths his head in dazzling light and Sam shields his eyes against the risk of blindness.

"Hiya Sammy." It doesn't sound quite like Dean and Sam's hand twitches toward the blade in his jacket. "What are you doing here?" It's not an angry question, just a friendly inquiry.

Sam squints against the light. "Where are we?"

Dean, at least Sam hopes it's really Dean and only Dean, surveys the landscape. "The Sahara Desert. The middle of the Sahara, if you want to get specific. Did you hitch a ride on that werewolf?"

The combination of sunlight, angelic transportation, and rotting corpses take their toll on Sam. He throws up a little bit, mostly liquid and what appears to be the remnants of a chicken wrap he doesn't remember eating. Dean wrinkles his nose at the mess before easily sidestepping the place where the sand soaks it up.

"Here." He does nothing more than touch the tips of his fingers to Sam's shoulder and the nausea disappears. The disgust remains.

Sam shrugs him off. "What are you doing here, Dean?"

"Well, I figured this was the most out of the way place I could find. The Sahara's not exactly a high traffic area, and it's definitely not a popular vacation spot so it's pretty unlikely that anyone's gonna get smiting sickness," Dean explains, putting his hands on his hips as he looks out over the sand dunes.

"What?" Sam blinks.

"Yeah, it's a real thing. Trust me, I've had it before. It's not fun." Dean shudders. "Blurry vision, puking your guts out, the whole nine." His expression flips from casual to concerned. "Is that why you just tossed your cookies?"

"What? No. No, Dean, I don't have...smiting sickness or whatever. And I wasn't talking about here in the desert. I meant what are you doing here? What are you trying to do? Who are all these people? Why did you kill them?"

"Ah." Dean crosses behind Sam, nudges a body with his boot.

When Sam glances over his shoulder, he nearly vomits again. The thing looks like a skinned horse, with a human's torso comprised of prominent ribs, elongated arms and a man's head, attached to the middle of its back. It's a nuckelavee. As far as Sam knows, those nightmares only exist on the northern islands of Scotland. Just behind it, he's pretty sure he can identify the white tail of a ningen, a Japanese sea monster that lures fishermen to their deaths. Either the monsters have started migrating to the great American melting pot, or Dean's been busy. Very busy. The bodies stretch out for miles and miles. All with the same ashes where their eyes should be, burn marks like creeping vines down their cheeks.

"Don't worry, Sammy."

Dean's voice is at his ear unexpectedly and Sam jumps.

"I'm almost done. Almost done with the corporeal monsters." His tone of voice, it's foreign to Sam. Too...euphoric for the brother Sam knows. "Then I'll take care of the ghosts. They're a little harder to figure out but I can do it. I can do it. And then I'll finish with the demons and whatever's left of the angels. Angels are dicks anyway."

Sam faces him fully and, without the glare of the sun, the damage is obvious. There are holes in Dean's skin. Cauterized by some internal heat, so at least there's no blood. But they are still holes. And there are places where the skin is peeling off, hanging in little flaps from his neck. The sight is horrific and must be painful but Dean doesn't seem to notice, too caught up in whatever agenda he's set for himself.

"Dean," Sam tries to say but the name lodges sideways in his throat. He chokes a little bit, swallows it down. Gathers his breath and gives it another go. "Dean, you have to stop."

Dean tilts his head in a mannerism so like Michael that Sam has to look away. "Stop? Why would I stop? Sam, why would I stop when I am so close?"

"Look at yourself!" Sam shouts, returning his gaze to Dean's body, to the damage he can see and to what he can only imagine is hidden beneath the multiple layers of clothing.

Dean does look, but it's with a detached sort of engagement. Like that time when Sam was in fifth grade and Dean went with him on a field trip to that museum and Sam pressed his nose up against the glass to stare down at the prehistoric rock shards while Dean hung back against the opposite wall, tapping his foot to a song only he could hear.

"Dean, you can't keep drawing from Michael's grace." His fear makes his words come out sharper than he means.

Dean's only response is to match Sam's gaze and Sam is shocked to see that Dean's eyes are blue. Not the white-blue he would recognize as an angel shining through, but they are blue. Whatever Dean's been doing, it's messing with him physically on a scale that Sam was not prepared for.

"Dean. Listen to me, just-please. Please, listen," Sam starts.

"I don't get what the problem is," Dean interrupts, all calm and composed, as if he's the rational one in this argument. "I'm doing what has to be done. What you've always dreamed of, Sam." That's one hell of a warning sign and Sam takes notice. "I'm stopping it."

"Stopping what?" Sam's mouth moves on autopilot, his brain frozen like a rabbit thinking it can avoid detection if it sits still enough.

"All the bad. All the monsters." Dean's face is lit up with a strange kind of hope. "I'm going to change things. Really change them."

Those words, verbatim as they are, strike a chord as clear as a bell in Sam's memories. For as much as Dean sticks his nose up at heart to heart conversations and touts his 'no chick flick moments' like a badge of real manhood, Sam can always trust him to latch onto some obscure conversation from weeks ago and turn it into something it's not. It was supposed to be wishful thinking, a pipe dream. It was supposed to be some kind of motivational cat poster. Something to remind them to keep doing what they were doing. Sam never imagined it would lead to this. To a desert of blood and death, and a brother destroying himself to achieve it.

"But you'll die," Sam blurts.

"So?"

Sam's heart stutters, takes a moment to regain its pacing.

"Look," Dean spreads his hands, "If I do this, if I can finish what I started, imagine what the world would be like, hm? Can you picture it, Sam? You and Jack and Cas. And Mom and Jody and...everybody. Everybody would be safe. No more monsters. No more angels or demons. Just people. People who are free to live their lives without having to be afraid of the dark." He drops his arms limply to his sides. "Isn't that what Dad taught us to do? Save people? The family business?"

"It might be kind of hard to run the family business without the family," Sam contends, sweat stiffening his collar.

Dean sighs, rolls his shoulders. "There wouldn't be a need for it anymore. If I can take out every supernatural threat out there, every evil thing, no one would have to hunt. Ever."

Sam's sense of equilibrium is liquidizing. The skyline is tilting and he can't quite catch his breath.

Fingers on the side of his neck, a hand with raw sores on it, vibrations in the palm, an incredible energy humming beneath the surface. The touch is bittersweet.

"Sammy, you would be out. For real this time. No more hunting. You could get that life you always wanted."

"You have to know, I've moved on from that," Sam murmurs, tasting salt in the corner of his mouth. Sweat or tears or regret.

"But Sam, I mean, come on. This is the chance of a lifetime. We can finally do it. Set things right in the world. I'm tired of bringing it to the point of extinction. Maybe, just this once, I can actually fix it." Sam shakes his head, doesn't trust himself to speak. His lack of enthusiasm dims some of Dean's exhilaration. But still, the shadow of a smile plays over his face."There are worse reasons to die," he says.

Sam snaps. His fist connects with Dean's temple. He's expecting him to reel, to fall back a step. To return to the reality that there's nothing Sam would rather do than fight monsters with his big brother. Side by side, like always.

The hit rocks Dean's head to the side but he simply turns it back to look at Sam. Caught off guard maybe, but not hurt. Sam wonders if he was ever this infuriating when he was high on demon blood. Because Dean on angel grace is starting to be a real pain in the ass. Sam throws another punch. Dean lets him. Just stands there and takes it. Like it doesn't matter. Like Sam isn't sloppy and on the verge of tears and unraveling. As if their whole lives, the years of hunting together, of facing down impossible odds, defeating monsters and gods, losing and finding one another. The times they rewrote their destinies, the years of blood and pain and loss, of faith and family and taking a stand. They've both been to Hell and back, each relying on the other to heal the unimaginable scars. Like none of that means anything. As if it's disposable and garbage and nothing worth keeping, nothing worth a second glance.

Well, it might not mean anything to Dean but it's everything to Sam and he's got to make Dean see that. To understand. To stop this suicide mission before it's too late. Sam tried words but Dean is too far gone for something so restrained. So he switches to Dean's second language. Violence. Trained to hunt, taught to kill. Many times, Sam has been scared by Dean's penchant for causing pain, the pleasure he derives from torturing, and hurting, and spilling blood. This should be the dialect Dean speaks. These blows Sam's raining down on him. Unaimed strikes that don't seem to make a difference.

"You think I could ever want that? That I would ever settle down and retire without my brother there with me?"

Sam draws his arm back, preparing for one last punch. He's going to throw all his weight behind this one. This is the one that will get through to Dean when nothing else has. This is his final card to play. It's all or nothing. The sun is a scorching presence at his back when he goes for it. He swings. And Dean catches his wrist.

"Stop, Sam." Low and sad. Resigned. "I have to do this."

Ocean air fills Sam's nose, the scent of unbridled freedom. Then the noise of distant hurricane winds, rushing together at once. Now he can see, by the shadow that expands across grains of sand and piles of corpses, the immense spread of wings. Glorious, transmundane, lofty, these pinions of empyrean strength that are set to steal his brother from him. If he loses him now, he won't find him again. This is the fate they fought so hard against all those years ago. Dean consumed within Michael's inferno. Sometimes, Sam thinks his life is a circle and right when he thinks himself past some danger, he's there again. Dean has it in his head that he's got to save Sam, to save the world. The same damn message that was beat into him by trauma and a complicated father and his own personality. He will sacrifice himself to attain paradise for Sam.

It's pure instinct. Instinct and desperation. Sam lunges forward to anchor Dean. To hold him down with a tangible weight in the hopes of defeating the pull of those celestial wings. When his arms circle around Dean, when his hands clutch fistfuls of a worn jacket in a painful grip, the feathers slice into him. Sharpened feathers of heaven's greatest warrior cutting at him, as if to say, yes human, you are fragile, you are delicate.

Trickles of blood run softly over Sam's forearm. He holds all the tighter to Dean. Crushes himself into Dean's chest as if their souls could press through the barrier of flesh and bone, and touch one another.

Dean is stiff under his fingers. Sam pauses his panting heavy breaths, waiting for a change, Hoping for a response. They stand, shadows stretching beyond them, beneath a sun bleached sky. Sam's trembling. The intensity of his emotions transformed to physical shakes. It's so much that he almost misses it, the way Dean's head shifts minutely, chin tucking down against Sam's shoulder.

"Okay, Sam." It's surrender. It's Dean's arms returning the embrace, his palms against Sam's shoulder blades. "Let's go home."

One beat of silence. Two. Then Sam draws back gradually, slowly lifting away and dropping his arms. He stares at Dean, wanting to believe but hardly daring to. Expecting the sucker punch life always deals him. But no. As he watches, the majestic wings fold and disappear. The side of his hand dashes away an errant tear of relief.

Dean nods a little bit, reinforcing his own conviction. He meets Sam's eyes and repeats, "Let's go home." Stretches out a hand and Sam blinks to find himself on a patch of concrete, the metal door of the bunker there in front of him.

His stomach sinks lower than it should, leaving him sick and disoriented. Disappointment, anger, fear. That's all there too. Because he's alone. Dean isn't with him. Dean tricked him. Dean lied to him. He wants to come up with a plan, to strategize for his next step, but the truth is that there's only a yawning black chasm where his thoughts should be. The dark looks inviting. Sam takes a moment to wonder. If he toppled in, would that really be so bad?

It's some kind of miracle, the flap of wings that stirs up the dried leaves on the grass. Sam spins around, drinks in the sight of Dean come home. There's a smile on his lips but this time, it's one that Sam recognizes.

"Had to do a little clean up first," Dean explains.

His happiness tangles Sam's tongue into knots. He can't speak yet.

"So." Dean claps his hands, once. "How do we do this?"

The angel blade is cool to the touch when Sam draws it. "I figure Michael's pretty weak right now. You expel him and I stab the son of a bitch as he leaves. Kill him before he can fly to another host."

Dean grins. "I like your thinking, Sammy."


End file.
